NASA

Get ready to see Pluto like you’ve never seen it before. Scientists with NASA’s New Horizons mission have released fresh images taken by the spacecraft, and these unprecedented views of the dwarf planet’s surface are nothing short of spectacular. Even though the mission scientists have downloaded only 4% to 5% of the available data since the spacecraft's historic July 14 flyby, the new images are revealing what a complex world Pluto is turning out to be, with flowing ice, a high atmosphere and nitrogen snow. In one image taken of the dark side of the icy world, the backlit dwarf planet looks stunning, its silhouette surrounded by the bright halo of...

Related "NASA" Articles

Get ready to see Pluto like you’ve never seen it before. Scientists with NASA’s New Horizons mission have released fresh images taken by the spacecraft, and these unprecedented views of the dwarf planet’s surface are nothing short of spectacular.
Even...

Astronomers digging through data from NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope say they have discovered the closest Earth-like "twin" circling another star ever found.
The planet, called Kepler-452b, is about 60% larger in diameter than...

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Monday that the company believes its rocket disintegrated last month after a small steel band purchased from a subcontractor snapped under pressure.Musk said the investigation's preliminary conclusions point to the...

Days after the first Federal Aviation Administration-approved drone delivery successfully dropped off medicine at a Virginia health fair, researchers behind the mission are already looking ahead to future uses of this technology -- in humanitarian crises....

To get through a day's work at the office, Kenyetta McCurdy-Byrd needs to pack an entire toolbox.
There's the bioptic telescope she attaches to her glasses to help her see long distances. There's the zoom text software she uses to read from a screen....

Claudia Alexander, a NASA scientist who oversaw the dramatic conclusion of the space agency's long-lived Galileo mission to Jupiter and managed the United States' role in the international comet-chasing Rosetta project, died July 11 at Methodist...

New images of Pluto sent to Earth by the New Horizons spacecraft are bolstering the case that the dwarf planet is a geologically active world.
Pluto is one of the largest objects in the Kuiper belt, a distant region beyond Neptune made up of frozen...

NASA took a flier on its photo safari to Pluto, betting that a journey of 9 1/2 years and 3 billion miles to get sort of close and not even stop would yield some great pix. It did; in fact, what the New Horizons spacecraft sent back was a revelation....

NASA's New Horizons mission has revealed that Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is full of surprises, including a strange feature that scientists are calling "a mountain in a moat."
You can see it in the upper left corner of the inset in the...

The first high-resolution images sent back by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft are already prompting scientists to reconsider their ideas about Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, as distant, dormant worlds.The new pictures, released Wednesday, reveal...

It's official: New Horizons has survived its close flyby of the Pluto system unscathed.
“We have a healthy spacecraft, we have a healthy system, and we are outbound for Pluto,” Alice Bowman, mission operations manager for New Horizons, said Tuesday night...

Pluto may be a dwarf planet, but it’s got an out-sized heart. Before NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past the icy world, it snapped and sent back this image showcasing the big, bright, heart-shaped feature covering a large part of the surface.
...

After a nearly decadelong journey, the New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past Pluto early Tuesday. The dwarf planet is now the most distant object ever visited by humanity.
New Horizons' closest approach was scheduled for 4:49 a.m. PDT when the...

New Horizons is in the home stretch. With fewer than 500,000 miles and less than a day to go until the NASA spacecraft whizzes by Pluto, the images it’s lobbing back across the roughly 3-billion-mile distance between Earth and Pluto are continuing to turn...

For 9-1/2 years, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sped through space at more than 30,000 mph on a one-way trip to Pluto. But when it finally gets to its distant destination, it has no plans to slow down.
"We are just flying by, so the...

The closer New Horizons gets to Pluto, the more puzzling the dwarf planet becomes.
The latest image released by NASA highlights four mysterious dark spots lined up along Pluto’s equator. Each of the spots is about 300 miles across, and they are evenly...

At last! After spending 9.5 years traveling 3 billion miles to reach Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has snapped an image of the dwarf planet that bears tantalizing hints of geologic features that will become clearer in the coming days.
Until...

Taxpayers lost $110 million when a SpaceX rocket carrying cargo to the International Space Station disintegrated shortly after liftoff last month, a NASA official said at a Friday hearing.
“That's gone,” William Gerstenmaier, a NASA associate...

If slow and steady wins the race, then NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity takes first place. In March, more than 11 years after it landed on the Red Planet, the scrappy little robot completed 26.2 miles, or the length of a full marathon – and now you can watch...

All systems are go for New Horizons' flyby of Pluto on July 14, members of NASA's New Horizons team said two days after a technical glitch caused the spacecraft to briefly lose touch with our planet.
"The spacecraft and all the instruments...